This invention relates to herbicides. More particularly, in a preferred aspect it relates to an improved method for enhancing effectiveness of herbicide absorption by weeds to effect a kill.
Herbicides with which this invention may be used are well known classes of herbicides. The precise herbicide itself forms no part of the invention. Suitable herbicides may be substituted urea herbicides, carbamate herbicides, chloro acetamides, triazines, acetanilides, morpholine derivatives, toluidines, clomazone derivatives and the like.
These classes of herbicides are known in the art and are sold under a variety of trademarks such as Harness.RTM., Dual II.RTM., Frontier.RTM., Extrazine.RTM., Command.RTM., Canopy.RTM., Sencor.RTM., Lasso.RTM., Prowl.RTM., Eradicane.RTM., Atrazine.RTM., and Dual.RTM., to name a few. In the broad chemical sense, most of these are classified as substituted urea herbicides, carbamate and thiocarbamate herbicides, chlorohydrocarbons, triazines, toluidines, clomazone derivatives, morpholines and/or acetanilides.
While the above have been shown to be effective herbicides, they also are known to have some environmental risks, such as a pollution risk. In order to minimize environmental risks such as pollution risks, effort always continues towards increasing the effectiveness of known herbicides from the standpoint of the ability to achieve the same level of effectiveness, but with less herbicide active component.
Accordingly, it is a primary objective of the present invention to provide a composition which enhances the effectiveness of certain classic types of herbicides, particularly the preferred urea herbicides such as Diuron.RTM., carbamate and thio carbamate herbicides such as Sutan.RTM., chloro acetamides such as Metolachlor.RTM., acetanilides such as Alachlor.RTM., and morpholine derivatives such as dimethomorph.
Yet another objective of the present invention is to achieve enhanced effectiveness of herbicides by enhancing the ability of the herbicide to be absorbed by the exterior cell membrane layers of weeds, thereby substantially increasing the effectiveness, and thus allowing reduction of the treatment level required in field application.
Still another objective of the present invention is to provide a herbicide effectiveness enhancing composition which uses as an additive a pollution- free additive that is environmentally unobjectionable.
And, a further objective is to improve penetration of the herbicide into the week tissue in adverse weather conditions such as drought or extended periods of low rainfall.
The method and means of accomplishing each of the above objectives will become apparent from the detailed description of the invention which follows.